Jakhar trying to cover up Cong govt failures by citing PPAs which were signed as per UPA govt guidelines– Sukhbir Badal

Chandigarh, October 30 – Former deputy chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today chided Pradesh Congress president Sunil Jakhar for talking out of his hat to cover up the Congress government’s failure to keep power tariff under control, saying Jakhar should know that all PPAs (power purchase agreements) were signed as per the guidelines issued by the then Congress led UPA government.

In a statement here, the SAD president said it seemed as if Sunil Jakhar was deliberately misleading the people by not telling them that the PPA’s were signed with private parties based on a competitive bidding process as per bidding guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Power. “The draft guidelines which were circulated by the Union power ministry to States were adopted as such by the SAD-BJP government. “The PPA was signed after an international bid which led to top companies like Larsen & Toubro and Vedanta bagging the prestigious projects. The PPAs of both these companies were the lowest in the country as of then”.

Speaking about the tripartite mou between the BJP-led Union ministry and the PSPCL, he said even on this issue Jakhar had hid the truth from the people. “The fact of the matter is that PSPCL was saddled with loans with high rate of interest as per the prevailing rates. The Union government proposed swapping these loans with loans at substantially low rate of interest under the UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana). This scheme involved implementing some reforms which were also successfully implemented by PSPCL. All this has resulted in savings of hundreds of crores for PSPCL”.

Asking the Congress government why it had failed to control the price of power as had been successfully done by the SAD-BJP government, he said “today the government is taking advantage of surplus power by offering the same to the industrial sector @ Rs five per unit. Who is misleading the people, me or Sunil Jakhar? Why doesn’t the Congress government reduce the draconian power tariff increase imposed on urbanites through similar means? , he asked.

Stating that Jakhar should have also listed the achievements of the previous Congress government on the power front, he said during 2002-07 not a single unit of power was added in Punjab. “Before the SAD-BJP government took up the reins of the State, Punjab was a power deficit State with a production of 6,200 mw. We added an additional 5,600 mw at a capital investment of Rs 30,000 crore. All this was possible due to the special focus on making Punjab power surplus. Simultaneously during this period PSPCL was awarded the distinction of being the best distribution utility in the country”.

Telling the PCC chief that it was he who was suffering from selective amnesia, the SAD president said Jakhar also forgot to mention that PEDA had been declared one of the best performing state nodal agencies under the energy conservation programme during 2012 and 2013 by the Union Ministry of Power. He said competitive and transparent bidding had resulted in huge interest in solar power projects in Punjab and that the State had achieved unique distinction of reducing its power buy back rates in successive PPAs which was on record.